School Days
by Ice Cream Kid
Summary: Ben tried to be a good child, but his fire ability makes it impossible. After his power activates, he struggles to navigate and the school's disciplinary system. Set after Grandfather's first defeat.
1. Schoolyard

"Andandandandand den he caught on fiyooh!" explained the very young student to the stern teacher whose graying hair was wrapped in a bun with not a stray hair out of place. She wore an equally severe beige wool sweater. The young schoolkid had woolly black hair and was terribly _loud_ -that kind of boy she wouldn't give a second thought to in regular circumstances.

"On fire?.! Oh dear...I'll get the school nurse," she turned on her low, modest heel towards the school building. The wooly-haired student added, flapping his arms.

"But he'z ok!"

"Oh thank heavens.." responded the teacher. "Did one of the recess supervisors put the fire out?"

"Ummmno. He'z still on fiyooh!" answered the student, His response elicited sharpened tone from the teacher.

"Gerald..what have I told you about telling lies? Now get back inside!"

The homeroom teacher shook her head in stern disappointment, and was about to make sure that Gerald was able to get back into the school building (and not somehow absent-mindedly attempt to climb over the barbed wire-topped stone wall like he did last week) when she heard the sound of both students and recess supervisors screaming in terror.

"H-hey! W-w-where're are you going?..1 I-I'm..not 'gonna hurt you...!" squeaked the apparent cause of the commotion. The homeroom teacher's eagle-eyed gaze zeroed in on the boy dressed neatly but with somewhat unruly brown hair, which only confirmed in her eyes his status as a _troublemaker_ -which was a shock to her, he had been such a quiet and well-behaved boy up until this point! But that innocuousness was _deceptive_ as she saw now. The misbehaved boy started running, tripping along the way, scraping his scrawny knees. His black glasses landed crooked, and he tilted them to see where the others had went.

All of the adults and kids had cleared the dreaded Basketball Court and were huddling in the doorway. One of the recess supervisors was talking to the homeroom teacher.

"How long have you known about that...boy?" the homeroom teacher asked.

"Th-this is the first time-we've seen th..this happen." The recess supervisor, a well-built man who had been on his college football team, stuttered.

"Well, see to it that it doesn't happen anymore," the teacher snapped crisply. "If word of this- _abomination_ gets out, well you can be sure that our school won't be on the front page because of our champion kickball team!"

"Oh-no-! Anything but that!" panicked the rest of the recess supervisors. They started to walk menacingly towards the little boy, who had picked himself up and was running, out-of-breath, to the school building. "Where do you think you're going? You're not allowed back inside until further notice!"

"I-I'm not?" gulped Ben. "O-okay..." Ben obediently stopped in his tracks. The recess supervisors surrounded the burning boy on all sides, exerting their recess supervisor authority-in control of the situation, ready to handle any and every situation that emerged in the schoolyard. But one of the supervisors couldn't stop gaping at the trail of _char-marks_ the boy had left on the asphalt instead of footprints.


	2. Storage closet

"Don't you think this is a little too harsh, Vice Principal?" asked the Principal. "Straight A's in science, math, and art, a model student...I'm afraid such negative reinforcement will cause his grades to slip."

The Principal was a nondescript, bland-looking man with a broad form. Water dripped.

"'Negative reinforcement'? With all due respect, Principal, 500 other students attend this school. I am simply looking after their safety."

Ben sneezed, his snot fogging up his glasses. He hugged his arms close to the rest of his body. His drenched sleeves were stuck to his skin.

"But, the child really did nothing wrong-" the Principal's eyes showed a light of concern behind his own glasses.

A shiver wracked Ben. Pappy wouldn't be pleased that he had gotten sick at school. He wasn't as _scary_ or _evil_ as he used to be, before Monty took away his powers and freed the kids from the tapioca factories, even him, but still, Pappy disapproved of well, a lot of things. Every little thing.

"He _combusts_ at the slightest spike in emotion! Incinerated his own desk, injured the student sitting next to him, who sustained second-degree burns!"

And this wasn't a little thing. All he could do was mouth "sorry" as the other student he injured-his friend-his only friend that wasn't Monty, was taken to the nurse's office. His friend was screaming the whole time, a look of being betrayed in his green eyes. Ben felt terrible, so the roughness which the Physical Education teacher grabbed him out of his seat and marched him to the Principal's office didn't really register in his mind, like it was happening to someone else. Like someone else was in trouble and going to be punished.

"Now I do not doubt that he does not intend to do cause injury, but this does not change the fact-that the boy is dangerous-this is the most humane way to make certain he does not endanger others."

The drowned flame started to return...from stress, maybe, or because his fever was rising from getting sick. But either way..

"He's..he's catching fire again!"

The homeroom teacher with an expressionless frown signaled the hose to be turned on, and a spout of freezing water hit Ben again, putting the fire out as he sputtered and choked on the relentless blast of cold water. The force of the water made him hit the brick wall, and he crumpled against the wall, dizzy, wet, very cold, and weak.


	3. Detention

The teacher in charge of Detention was even worse than the homeroom teacher. And she made sure that no student in Detention ever had idle hands.

"I'm sicka assemblin' staplers! Who made these teachers th' boss 'a us, anyway?!"

"You should have thought harder about the consequences for misbehaving in class!" yelled the Detention teacher's assistant. Sally was a sellout good student who had given up her Free Period to help with administering of Detention. Her light brown hair was in perfectly-combed pigtails held in place by impeccably-placed hairclips. She wore a white-and-blue dress. "Now hurry up! If your workbench doesn't meet the day's quota before the lunch bell, you'll be moved to cleaning the girls' bathroom!"

Clyde scowled, then violently kicked the bench, yanking on his chain. All students in Detention either had one or even two limbs chained to the wall, or were wearing a ball-and-chain. Kenny glared at Clyde as he finished another stapler, going faster as if to compensate for Clyde.

"Hey c'mon, I don't like teachers anymore'n ya do. But you're gonna get us all in trouble-it ain't my fault that your pop's always drinkin' an' your ma's a-"

"Leave my pa and ma outta this!" Clyde yelled, nearly knocking the bench over as he abruptly stood up, straining his chain to its limit and hurting his leg.

"No talking!" The Detention teacher's whip cracked in the air, cowing the students into silence. At least until the doors opened.

"Hey. gedda loada da new kid!" laughed Sammy, who didn't get to laugh at the other kids often, because he was actually the resident dork, despite his lack of enunciation. Clyde glared with his hard eyes that had seen things at the newcomer, who was pushed in by the Physical Education teacher. The whip-armed Detention teacher stared down at him with wariness and the utmost distrust like he was trouble _incarnate._

"Your homeroom teacher told me _all about you_ , Benedict Uno. Due to your bad behavior, you will spend Free Period in Detention from now on."

Ben was disoriented-after accidentally igniting the giant paper Mache dinosaur in the main hallway, he'd been abruptly removed from class. He was expecting to get hit with water again, but the Physical Education teacher instead took him here.

It was a large, cavernous box-shaped room, with very high ceilings and no windows. There were rows and rows of kids working over an assembly line table, shackled, some by the hands, and others by the ankle. He gulped and shuddered. It was just like working in Pappy's tapioca factory, before Monty rebelled against the adults. Of course, he wasn't that crazy or foolish to go against adults. Monty's actions only helped him to try and not get in trouble. Monty was always in Detention, at another school, always making that bid for freedom by tunneling under the barbed-wire fence or detonating ketchup bottles in the principal's office. Even though Pappy was defeated, Monty still railed against the unfreedom of schools. He wished Monty wasn't so stubborn, then he wouldn't be in Detention so often...

This was Ben's _first_ time in Detention, and he wasn't sure what to expect. The Physical Education teacher shackled his ankle with a ball-and-chain and shoved him to an empty spot on the bench. But he didn't protest or cry this time: this wasn't the _first_ time adults had put a ball-and-chain on him: Pappy had done it so none of them would run away from making tapioca. So far, so good. He at least was familiar with the work conditions, though he wasn't familiar with all the rest of the kids being good kids and him being one of the bad kids.

"Uh-um-um-wh-what am I supposed to do?" Ben asked weakly. He knew how to make tapioca thanks to working in Pappy's factory, but he stared rather confusedly at the array of metal parts on the bench. The other students worked grudgingly but steadily-no one wanted to clean the girls' bathrooms. Girls were supposedly to be prim and proper, but in the bathrooms they were savages, throwing their poop at the walls and using eleventy-billion wads of toilet paper. It was a _swamp_ in there, and every kid knew it. Or at least, every kid aside from Ben, who had never _been_ in the girl's bathroom. So he had no sense of urgency.

The sellout good kid walked over importantly and gave the new Detentionee instructions.

"You assemble the staplers. Since this is your first day, your quota is 50 staplers by the lunch bell! That's in 30 minutes. No extra time will be allotted!"

"Uh-um...c-can you at least show me how to put it together?"

The Detention teacher cracked her whip to get some slacker back on track. The sound of the whip made Ben wince. He was scared of loud sounds. The other kids leered at the slow, new kid.

"Heh-heh..Clyde..maybe ya don't hafta worry about bathroom duty after all! Heh-heh!"

"An' why's that, Kenny?"

Kenny snickered and tossed his head towards the newly-arrived kid-looking like a little teacher's pet with his suspenders and little bow tie.

"Look at poor lil' rich boy. He won't last thirtyteen minutes here!"

The other kids at the bench laughed. Clyde looked him up and down, and snorted in hostility at the other kid's narrow hands and clean face.

"Ya might as well give up now!" Clyde discouraged Ben.

Ben got nervous and fumbled several times, failing to complete a single stapler. The Detention teacher started to approach him. He tried to work faster, and ended up dropping all of the pieces. The other kids laughed. Sammy made a totally gross flushing sound. Ben looked up to see the cold glare of the Detention teacher boring into him. The teacher gripped her whip with both hands and pulled, making a creaking leathery sound that made Ben's heart beat fast with fear. _Wh-what's she going to do..?_

And then suddenly...

"Agh! It's freezing in here..!" shouted the Detention teacher. She spoke through a megaphone. Her breath was visible in the cold temperature "Furnace unit, why isn't the temperature of the room conducive to labor?"

"We're outta firewoodl!" yelled the furnace unit leader. A murmur shook the room. Clyde threw down his stapler and whooped. He pulled out a mallet he had hidden in his winter coat, smashed his chain, and tried to make a break for it. But the Physical Education teacher intercepted him, confiscated the mallet, and dragged him fighting and thrashing into another room. The door slammed with a forbidding echo. A terrible scream from the adjacent room. A terrified silence filled the Detention hall. Then the kids sluggishly got back to work again, unconcerned with the fate of Clyde.

Ben gulped again-at the scream and the callousness of his fellow students, but didn't spare too much more thought over either, as he focused all his energy into pulling himself up and starting to drag his ball and chain away from the bench.

"Benedict! Where do you think you're going, young man? Get back here this instant!"

"Yes, get back here!" parroted the Detention teacher's assistant.

Ben wanted to turn around to assure both the Detention teacher and her assistant that he wasn't running away, but he was just too _cold_...so he kept on trudging, past the other shivering students. Some were still working, others were rubbing their mittens together to stay warm. Ben felt like an icicle as he dragged himself up the ramp. The ball-and-chain was very heavy so he slid back and almost fell over. "Benedict!" shouted the Detention teacher "This is the last time I'm going to tell you. Don't make me take you the Basketball Court!"

Ben shuddered very low to the ground while he gripped the freezing railing with his shivering hands. He wanted to heat himself up, but no, he wanted to save his strength. He was terrified of the Basketball Court. He never experienced that horror but he heard the _stories_. It wasn't like Detention where the students were being punished, yes, but- their labor kept the school functioning. The Basketball Court was pure, unambiguous torture used on the worst, most badly-behaved of students. No kid wanted to be there. The only thing worse than being on the Basketball Court was to be on the Baseball Field. Students from other schools were envious that their school had a basketball and baseball team, and students from his school would laugh nervously, not wanting to explain to them what Basketball and Baseball meant in their school.

His body temperature was dropping rapidly. He stopped to rest on the railing as the low temperature sapped at his energy. The railing was freezing against his chest, but it was better than fighting up the ramp. If he could just rest for awhile...maybe think about something else.

"That's it, young man! To the Basketball Court with you!" The Detention teacher started to clack towards him, albeit slowly. There was about fortyteen feet distance between the Detention teacher and him.

By now, Ben had become resigned to the fact that all of his teachers and the Vice Principal saw him as a badly-behaved student. After all, he was in Detention. Adults were really good at sorting, so if they said he belonged in Detention, then he belonged in Detention, but-he felt he _wasn't as bad_ to be punished on the Basketball Court. No, he had the right to _work_ like any of these other kids. He had _more_ right to work because he wanted to work! These other kids-they weren't _grateful_ that the school saw it fit to use their labor- they who were just troublemakers when they could easily just throw them into cells and deprive them of the _dignity_ and rehabiization of work! Well..he'd...show _them...!_

He fought up the ramp, straining against the frosted metal ball dragging him back, the incline, and the cold icing him up too. With one last strain he made it, and he breathed hard at the top of the ramp. The Detention teacher was twentyteen feet away, and looked really angry. She held her whip over her shoulder as she closed the gap.

"Who th' heckre you, 4-eyez?!" yelled the dirty-faced, rough-voiced leader of the furnace unit, the special unit that spent one hour in class, and the rest in Detention. The furnace unit leader hated good kids and shoved the suck-up almost down the ramp. "Get back t'yer area!"

"W-w-wait.." Ben whispered, clinging to the freezing railing. "I-I can helllp...!" he pleaded. The furnace unit leader growled. Ugh, 4-eyes suck-up had such an annoying voice, like he had something stuck up his nose. The furnace unit leader wanted to punch the nerd's glasses in and give im a swirly in the girls' bathroom, and he woulda, if it wasn't so flippin cold. And it was hard t' punch anything with his hands shackled together. So the furnace unit leader trudged out of the way, letting 4-eyez pass. He actually wanted to see how 4-eyez was gonna try and 'help' them.

Ben struggled along towards the furnace, dragging his ball-and-chain with increasing difficulty, and slowly dragged himself up the ramp into the empty furnace. There was no kindling or even ash left, just a giant empty metal shell. Ben started to heat up, pushing against the frigid cold. He started to breathe easy as he returned to normal temperature. Then grew hotter and ignited. The furnace unit gawked.

"Hey!" wheezed another furnace unit member who arrived, out of breath. "Swiped some more coal!-uh..."

Ben was aflame, stopping the Detention teacher in her tracks.

"Well, who would have thought? The little monstrosity has a use, after all..."


End file.
